Sunday, January 08, 2017

The great Moroccan Israeli singer Neta Alkayam covers a song from Jacob Abitbol -- father of the much better known Moroccan Jewish singer Haim Botbol. On Haim Botbol, please check out this post from the invaluable blog Jewish Morocco Jukebox. Jacob, the post says, was a respected vocalist and violin player who released a number of 45s in Morocco during the 1950s. I've not been able to find much else about Jacob. The video is, it's not surprising, drenched in nostalgia.

Update, January 11, 2017. Here is the original, Jacob Abitbol's "Khoti Khoti Ghadroni," posted on YouTube by the inimitable toukadime.

Wednesday, January 04, 2017

I'm in the middle of trying to finish off an article about pop-rai, and hunting for photos of Cheb Khaled and his first band, Les Cinq Étoiles (Ennoujoum El Khams). It was modeled after the Moroccan neo-folk bands like Nass El Ghiwane that were so popular in Morocco, and then were disbanded after Morocco invaded and occupied Spanish Sahara in 1975. Khaled formed the group in 1971 or 1972, performing Moroccan neo-folk material, but by 1974 he was already doing his own material, with "Trig Lycée."

In the course of my research I came across this photo:

I found it here -- a YouTube video created for the posting of a Cheb Khaled song called "Rayha Ghaydana."

The posting suggests the recording was released in 1979. A Khaled discography that I found (where? I now can't remember) states that this song is from Cheb Khaled's second cassette release, with the name Deblet Galbi. Khaled's first recording (Trig Lycée -- a cassette with four songs) came out in 1974, so this seems like a long gap, as "Trig Lycée" was a hit, but...I just don't know. The musicians shown here could be the ones who played on the Deblet Galbi recording. On some of the tracks, you also hear a guitar. Khaled, of course, plays accordion. Were these guys in Les Cinq Étoiles? Did they also appear on the Trig Lycée release?

Still hunting...I do love the fact that people post photos with YouTube vids.

Sunday, January 01, 2017

I had actually seen the trailer for Logan in the movie theaters last
week, but this scene flashed by so quickly that I don't think I noticed
the kufiya. Today's New York Times has a short article by Michael Gold
called "4 Trailers That Have Us Excited for 2017." One of the four trailers the article features is Logan, starring Hugh Jackman, and it's accompanied by this photo. In the trailer, this scene is to be found at 1:20. It appears, based on what I can deduce from the trailer, that the Logan character is being chased down, in the US, by military types. The kufiya on the soldier would appear to reflect that he had done service in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the wearing of kufiyas by soldiers has been quite common over the last 14 years, and I've documented several instances on this blog. I own a military issue kufiya, khaki colored, that is flame retardant, given to me by someone who served in Iraq.

About Me

Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.